Bruar's Rest

ground. She knew exactly what form of carnage awaited her. How many warnings had she given them, but they had to find out the hard way. She must have sat there for ages, stiff and terrified to go round the corner for fear of what lay and bled there. She didn’t want to share such awfulness with the night.
    It was a very early dawn before she dared to walk gingerly into her campsite, bottom lip trembling with each step. Her footsteps felt warmth on the singed ground; she scanned the burnt remains of what was once her small canvas home. Everything smouldered. ‘They must have torched the place yesterday when I was up the hill,’ she thought. Taking a stick she prodded at the remains of her material life; the family box that held keepsakes and trinkets.
    Where did they put the men? she thought, because there was no sign of bodies. It was useless, she knew, to pretend that either was alive, but in a vain hope she called their names. Death had hardened her, and suddenly her head filled with wicked thoughts. ‘I hope Old Nick has them planted in hell, then I will be completely free. Rory would only have stayed off the drink for a short while. No, I hope he’s finished.’ She wanted them gone, needed a clean slate. Feelings of desertion fought with her conscience. A desire to just run away from that horrible, smouldering ruin flooded her mind, but her heart wasn’t hard. In the woodland next to the site she thought something moved. She wanted to run away, never look back, but again she couldn’t, and called in reply. A weak voice, barely audible, answered.
    ‘I’m coming,’ she called, running over to see, lying half-dead on the earth, O’Connor. A great gash slit his face wide open, and blood trickled slowly from a wound in his chest. ‘Where’s Rory?’ she asked, helping to sit him up.
    ‘I don’t know. Those bastards tricked us. We were having a quiet drink in the pub when a boy came in an’ said the campsite was on fire. The big man was worried you might have been attacked, so ran back here without me. I feel he might be here somewhere but it’s been the devil of a silence all night, with not a sound but my own heart. Help me, Megan!’
    ‘How the hell can I do that, the ploughmen have torched everything, there’s not even a torn sheet to bandage you with. Anyway, what was he doing in the pub? I left him promising he’d finished with the drink, forever.’
    ‘For sure he was. Not so much as drink o’ water passed his lips. He’d come to say goodbye, but when the boy runs in he took off as I said, tinking you were in danger.’
    ‘God curse you, Irish, I hate you for this.’ But nevertheless she did her best to wash his wounds with burn water. If he was to survive, though, his only chance was Doctor Mackenzie. But where was Rory’s body? She had to search for him first.
    O’Connor was pleading. ‘You know they’ve done him in, lass. Please fetch the old doctor, I’ll bleed to death while you look for him.’
    ‘Another thousand curses on you, Irishman! This is all your doing! You’re the one who should be dead! Taking him to whores and pouring drink into him. I hate the very ground you walk on, and I hope you do die and I hope it takes ages, with maggots chewing you from feet to collarbone.’
    Just then a great roar of an engine was heard from far down the road. In no time a motor car trundled to a halt. Their old friend Mackenzie wobbled from the passenger side. He’d brought the new doctor with him. When he saw that Megan was alright, the old man sat his shaky frame on a stone seat and said, ‘One of the ploughmen’s wives heard her man saying they’d killed the tinkers! I’ve been out of my mind with worry thinking on what state they may have left you in, lassie. But have they hurt the men?’
    ‘Oh aye, doctor, they done a grand job. O’Connor is bleeding to death over there, and as for big Rory, well, I fear he’s breathed his last. I can’t see hide nor hair of him.’
    ‘I’ll see to the Irishman if you and the new doctor search for Rory. Who knows but he might have crawled off to shelter.’
    The young doctor ran behind her as she called out to Rory. Her fear mounted at what state he would be in. Nor was she wrong! Lying in a crumpled heap, not far from where she had found O’Connor, was the dead body of her father-in-law. Big Rory Stewart’s throat was sliced open from one ear to the other. His blood covered the ground beneath him, so he lay on a deep red